"Ah! my dear--my dear--" stammered the poor man. But he had no strength to say more. That grateful emotion coming upon him in the midst of his frenzy, melted it into a sob of tears, of blood, of choking speech. His face became purple. He motioned: "Take me away." And, leaning on Paul de Gery's arm, he stumbled through the door of his box and fell to the floor in the lobby. "Bravo! bravo!" shouted the audience at the conclusion of the actor's tirade; and there was a noise as of a hail-storm, an enthusiastic stamping,--while the great inert body, borne by scene-shifters, passed through the brilliantly-lighted wings, obstructed by men and women crowding around the entrances to the stage, excited by the atmosphere of success, and hardly noticing the passage of that lifeless victim carried in men's arms like the victim of a street affray. They laid him on a couch in the property room, Paul de Gery by his side with a physician and two attendants who were eager to help. Cardailhac, who was very busy with the performance, had promised to come and see how he was getting on, "in a moment, after the fifth act." Bloodletting upon bloodletting, cupping, plasters, nothing produced even a twitching of the skin in the sick man, who was insensible to all the methods of resuscitation usually resorted to in cases of apoplexy. A relaxation of every fibre of his being seemed to give him over to death, to prepare his body for the rigidity of the corpse; and that in the most dismal place on earth, chaos lighted by a dark lantern, where all the debris of plays that had been performed, gilded furniture, hangings with gorgeous fringe, carriages, strong boxes, card-tables, discarded flights of stairs and banisters, were heaped together pell-mell under the dust, among ropes and pulleys, a wilderness of damaged, broken, demolished, cast-off stage properties. Bernard Jansoulet, as he lay amid that wreckage, his shirt torn away from his chest, at once bleeding and bloodless, was the typical shipwrecked victim of life, bruised and cast ashore with the pitiable debris of his artificial splendor broken and scattered by the Parisian whirlpool. Paul, broken-hearted, gazed sadly at that face with its short nose, retaining in its inert condition the wrathful yet kindly expression of an inoffensive creature who tried to defend himself before dying, but had no time to bite. He blamed himself for his inability to serve him to any useful purpose. What had become of that fine project of his of leading Jansoulet through the quagmires, of saving him from ambuscades? All that he had been able to do was to rescue a few millions, and even those came too late. * * * * *